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  • The Gothic Fiction of Adelaida García Morales: Haunting Words
  • María Luisa Guardiola
The Gothic Fiction of Adelaida García Morales: Haunting Words Cambridge University Press, 2006 By Abigail Lee Six

The Gothic Fiction of Adelaida García Morales: Haunting Words is a timely representation of García Morales's oeuvre through the lens of the Gothic prism, an unlikely subject matter in Hispanic letters research. Abigail Six focuses on the haunting power of the word long after the reader has finished the work, through a Gothic reading of this contemporary Spanish writer's texts. This is an important, and much needed, comprehensive study of most of García Morales's novels. This author has not been included in many recent Spanish literature overview texts. Most of the critic's attention has focused on single novels, especially her first one, El Sur, overshadowed by Erice's eponymous 1985 film version. Six's monograph on the Gothic fiction of García Morales places the author in a much wider literary spectrum, synchronically and thematically, by studying the parallels of her novels with eighteenth and nineteenth century works within the tradition of the Gothic in English literature. Additionally, the comprehensive study of most of García Morales's narrative production is very useful in identifying the elements that link each and every text in a coherent manner, offering a new perspective on Adelaida García Morales as a writer.

The book is divided in nine chapters, with a short introduction and conclusion, followed by an extensive and valuable bibliography on the author's criticism and the Gothic theme in different literary traditions. Each chapter concentrates on one work, paired up with one classic Gothic text. Abigail Six notes in the Introduction that her intention is "to highlight some of the features that her [García Morales's] texts and the Gothic classics have in common" (5).

The chapters are titled according to the different criteria used to characterize a text as Gothic. Chapters 1, 6, 7, and 8 concentrate on psychological concepts such as physical and moral decay (chapter 1), fear of the Other (chapter 6), and keeping or discovering guilty secrets (chapters 7 and 8). More substantial elements, such as the sublime in mountainous settings (chapter 2) or frightening buildings (chapter 5), cause claustrophobia and entrapment, which in turn can bring to the surface what is repressed in normal life. Chapters 3, 4, and 9 present key Gothic figures: vampires, ghosts, and monsters. In this way García Morales transgresses taboos and boundaries, especially the most disturbing aspects of the gender divide. [End Page 215]

In chapter 1, El Sur and Bene (1985), the opening novels of García Morales's literary creation, are analyzed alongside Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91). The three works share the haunting effect produced by a specific narrative pattern, the downward spiral of a character in each individual text, causing the horror of those who watch them and the repercussion on the characters that surround them. Each novel constitutes a nightmare where the readers and internal characters alike are condemned to watch in horror. Chapter 2 presents the parallels between El silencio de las sirenas (1985) and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1974). The sublime vastness, and possible female liberation offered by the mountains in both texts, is short lived in a patriarchal society where women's lot is to be enclosed, either physically or psychologically. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is studied with La lógica del vampiro (1990). Both novels present the vampire concept raising "questions about power and powerlessness inflected by gender"(53). Ghosts, the quintessential Gothic figures, appear in Las mujeres de Héctor (1994) and The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James. In these ghost stories, the interplay between inside and outside is constantly present. The blurring divide amid the character's own memories, anxieties and imagination is confused by the haunting effect of the ghostly appearances. Chapter 5 focuses on the frightening buildings in La tía Águeda (1995) and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). Both novels depict the entrapment of the victims within the...

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